Trip Report

8 indomitable Obsidians met 2 equally stout City staff at the Fox Hollow trailhead as snow continued to fall for a morning of trail maintenance. We hiked to up the Ridgeline to Cline Road where the City had staged all the equipment and supplies for the days outing. Our task for the morning was to replace 2 old metal culverts under the Ridgeline Trail. To accomplish this task we broke into a couple of small groups with 3 people running power-wheelbarrows to supply us with tools, gravel, and large rocks.

Jesse Carry-Hobbs helped Pat, Janet, & Dan remove and replace a culvert whose falling water was eroding the bank and beginning to cut back under the trail.

Meanwhile Matt helped Clara and Jyoti remove and replace a culvert that was rusting through and would have soon claimed someone’s foot in a tetanus inducing injury. Clara swung the pick with precision to create perfect thin channels along the culvert, just enough room to pop it out. Jyoti & Matt cleaned out the debris and improved the drainage for the new culvert. Ed joined us to scrounge rocks to line the trail sides and the new channel from the uplifted roots of fallen fir trees. Pat joined us and began setting rocks like a true dry-stone mason, though every rock was wet & muddy. As we laid the new culvert the debate over whether or not it was level or sloped was settled by Jyoti’s iPhone and its level app.

It was Jim, Ed, and Josh Schrader of EPOS that drove the power-wheelbarrows supplying us with rocks for solid bases for the out-flowing water and gravel to replace the trail surface. For the final step in the process, Josh had brought a compactor that he used to smooth and compact the new trail surface.

We made short work of replacing the culverts and as work wound down and the rain began we began our departure. On our way out we added gravel to a climbing turn that hadn’t taken the tracks of the power-wheelbarrows well.